Wednesday 20th June 2007

Yippee! It wasn't quite as cold when we woke up this morning. Nikki made us a cuppa, we had showers and then I packed up the van. As I was getting things ready Nikki started talking to some people who are from New Zealand and also camping. They seemed really impressed with our van. There are four of them sharing a larger van - but they didn't seem to like it. They were really nice and asked if we were traveling up to Auckland. When we said no, they said it was a shame - we could've stayed at their house, and they'd have lent us a car to travel round in (bless 'em - they were like Grandparents trying to spoil us). We took a walk along the beach next to our camp and then set off.

We drove into Whakatane and had a look a couple of the shops there. We walked up to the Tourist Information place as I wanted to enquire about prices for flying to the White Island (this is an active volcano out in the ocean that you can get to by boat or plane). We decided against going and used the free internet on offer at Tourist Information instead.

After leaving Whakatane, we drove inland to Rotorua. It's here that you can see things like boiling mud and erupting geysers. When we'd been on the internet I'd spoke to Aaron on MSN and he warned me that Rotorua was quite smelly... boy were we in for a shock!

This place ABSOLUTELY STINKS! Not just a little bit - but loads. It's as if the whole city are cooking eggs at the same time. We stopped at a place just on the outskirts called Hell's Gate. We got out to have a look - but Nikki (the drama queen) had to get back in the van because of the smell of sulpher. I did get to see some boiling mud though in the thermal pools.

Instead of going straight into the city centre we drove to the 'Buried Village' of Te Wairoa. In 1886 Mount Tarawera erupted, covering the entire place in about 2 meters of hot ash and lava. You can now walk round the site and look at things that have been excavated as well as looking at buildings still buried in the floor. It was pretty cool, although hard to imagine as everywhere is covered with lush green grass now (not hot ash and lava like when it happened). We even found a beautiful waterfall when were exploring the site.

After our walk, we sat in the Tea Rooms and warmed ourselves up with a nice hot drink. Nikki had a coffee and I had a cup of tea (which was made using real tea-leaves, and yet still had less leaves floating in the cup than the tea my Mum makes using a tea-bag (ha ha)).

We drove into the centre of Rotorua to look for somewhere to stay, but the weather was pretty bad (and the smell wasn't any better). We checked our guides and there was nothing there that we couldn't see anywhere else and I know for a fact Nikki didn't fancy a mud bath only to get out smelling worse than when she went in, so we drove on to Lake Taupo.

When we arrived at 7pm we were both really hungry, so we checked into a Top 10 campsite and then drove into the centre to get some food. After the drive a nice Thai meal went down a treat!

Thankfully, Lake Taupo smells much better that RotorPOOa!